Kidnapping: Even Wine Tappers Are At Risk

The kidnap, recently, of a 72 year-old palm wine tapper, Chief Emmanuel Ujagba, from Umuebele Okporo in Orlu Local Government of Imo State by a three-man gang has again drawn attention to the widening nest of hoodlums thriving on the trade of abduction-for-ransom.

Chief Ujagba was reportedly seized from his country home by the gangsters, whom he thought came to buy palm wine, blindfolded and taken away before the police came to his rescue. Apart from Ujagba, other most recent victims include Professor Kamene Okonjo, mother of Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (December 9, 2012).

 

The sum of N13 million was reportedly paid to the kidnappers in exchange for her freedom. The same group that abducted Professor Okonjo also kidnapped a 72-year-old woman, Mrs. Regina Obi Daity on March 3, 2013, shortly after the former was released.

The kidnappers demanded N10 million ransom on the victim, were paid N2 million, but killed the elderly woman over the N8 million unpaid balance. Other victims include Pa Odvwri (Delta State).

The Odivwri family sent N20, 000 recharge cards to the kidnappers and the condition for his release was still being negotiated when they killed the old man. National Vice-Chairman of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) in the South-East, Dr. Chudy Nwike, was likewise abducted and killed after the payment of an unspecified amount as ransom to the kidnappers.

Reported also were the abduction of 87-year-old former Minister of Petroleum, Alhaji Shettima Mongono, and the wife, daughter and driver of a Supreme Court judge, Justice Bode Rhodes-Vivour near Benin, the Edo State capital, on Friday, May 10, 2013, among others.

In Lagos, the latest most celebrated victim is Kehinde Bamigbetan, the Chairman of Ejigbo Local Council Development Area (LCDA). Bamigbetan regained his freedom on the payment of a whooping ransom of N15 million.

Before him was Aremu Gawat, a television presenter who left his Dolphin Estate home in Ikoyi on his way to Alausa one ill-fated evening late last year. His car was later found steaming on Carter Bridge, but till date, Gawat has not been found.

Other cases include the kidnap of a 16-year-old male student of the American International School, Lagos on his way to school; an unidentified returnee from the United States who fell victim in FESTAC, and many unreported and unsung others.

Indeed, it is widely believed that cases of kidnapping in Lagos are underreported. For Lagos, however, the state governor, Babatunde Fashola, has given a firm assurance that his government will stop at nothing to reducing the menace to the barest minimum in the state.

At the first session of the 32nd Synod of the Diocese of Lagos (Anglican Communion) held in Lagos recently, Fashola said: “As safe as Lagos State is, for the first time in a long time, people are afraid of the rapid increase in kidnapping. It is a new problem and I assure Lagosians that the government is on top of the situation and would deal squarely with it.”

There is, indeed, the existential imperative not to give kidnappers’ strongholds any respite in Lagos, the commercial nerve centre of the country and home to Nigerians from all over the country.

Indeed, if ransom-driven kidnap is allowed unchecked, it might get to a stage where indigent Nigerians would be abducted and whatever they could afford extorted from them.

It may be said that kidnapping is lucrative, not just because criminals see it as a relatively safer source of quick wealth when compared with armed robbery, but also for other reasons such as assassination and ritual purposes.

Quite lucrative, according to reports, are human parts markets in Lagos and other parts of the country. Therefore, in tackling the kidnapping scourge, the police should be firm and committed to fishing out the criminals for prosecution and punishment.

Security operatives should likewise nose around and smash all forms of markets where human parts change hands. For, without ready buyers, kidnapping for ritual will be unattractive.

The government should, in addition, create jobs to reduce growing unemployment which breeds and sustains crime, as well as provide an enabling business environment for privatesector- driven job opportunities. Neighbourhood watch should be encouraged, and like Governor Fashola said, eternal vigilance should be the watch word.